


Under the Greensward Tree

by Neftzer_nettlestonenell



Series: A True Outlaw Story [3]
Category: Robin Hood (BBC 2006)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-17 09:46:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13656459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neftzer_nettlestonenell/pseuds/Neftzer_nettlestonenell
Summary: Immediately following on the heels of "How to Tell a True Outlaw Story". Nell and Marian encounter one another in Sherwood.





	Under the Greensward Tree

**Author's Note:**

> [It is important to note that the events in Acre as shown in S2 are not accurate (as will be discussed herein); Gisborne was banished, Marian not dead.]

Nell did not travel into, nor through, Sherwood Forest like an expert. She was a novice to its coppices, its thickets and brambles, and rutted, little-used tracks, far more at home in a bustle of people, of commerce, wherein she could hide, wherein she could make her living, earn (rather,  _acquire_ ) her bread, do better than simply eking out an existence.

She was no true woodswoman, but neither was she overly daunted by the vast living green she had followed Allan-A-Dale into. At times in her life she had lived within a stone's throw of the immense wood, hunted (as did many a villager) about along its edges for anything valuable one might take or harvest that would not bring the Sheriff's Guard down upon you.

She did not think A-Dale knew he was being followed, certainly if he did he had not acted so in his rather direct path-making to (and then into) the shrouded trees of the outer forest.

She was not sure how competent she would prove at tracking him, once within the world of the woodland. But she had confidence in her own (usually used to other ends) observant bent, her sharp eyes and keen perception, and believed firmly they would locate her quarry, and with him what he had taken from her, sooner as opposed to later.

 

* * *

Some way into the growing-denser forest, she came upon a quick-running brook, and took the time to stoop down to it and use its half-icy, colder-than-simply-brisk water to wash her face.

It mattered little to her, her relative need for speed or hurry in the pursuit of Allan-A-Dale and what he had taken from her. She did not rush in the setting of herself back to rights following her incarceration in the Sheriff's dungeon. She would not tarry long.

Using the unseen underside of her frock's apron, she brought the water to dissolve the thin layer of viscous substance staining her skin in the bruise she had painted there. This took some elbow grease to fully rub away.

Allan-A-Dale, had he been spying on her, would have been interested to note that she did not even attempt removal of the mark she had claimed to him was also faked upon the otherwise unblemished flesh of her right shoulder.

She knew such work to reclaim that area would do no good.

She had lived long (and at times, hard) enough to know...there were some things in life impossible to ever wash away.

She looked down to it, the brand of the Sheriff's insignia razed into her skin. It was at such an angle on her that it was not an easy thing to fully sight it from her vantage point. Even trying often produced something of the onset of a head and neck ache.

But she knew its shape and form well enough. In her time at Treeton she had seen it continually on the bodies of others.

What she had never actually seen was anything like Allan-A-Dale's response to it. If his sighting of it had taken him aback, so his reaction had similarly affected her.

He had hardly been looking of himself in the greasy shoulder-length wig he wore, but she had enough of him in view to realize that his encountering of it and the simultaneous repulsion and attraction to it that he evidenced were nothing like what she had come across in other moments of her life when it had been exposed.

 _Disgust_ , she had seen, in lecherous men preferring a girl unmarked.  _Curiosity_ , in men less discerning about their dalliances.  _Fear_ , in all who recognized that it set her aside as the Sheriff's Own, forbidden to pursue any life outside of Treeton, and his iron ore mines.

But what she had seen in the face, in the very posture of Allan-A-Dale, was a deeply searing regret. A childlike repentance, of one who has only just realized that judgment is never as swift as promised, and that retribution for wrongs might be decades in the coming.

She did not know what to make of it. She had not known how to react to it. The moment was so utterly without artifice, so much only the truth--and an uncomfortable, bare truth it held--one she could also tell he did not often experience, that she had glossed over it entirely, not sure he would have had the presence of mind to respond to any rejoinder she might have made.

And then, when she had required further truth--voluntarily this time--from him, and he had told her that 'twas he who had given her that, she had thought his eyes in that moment so brittle, so shallow, no deeper than a baptismal font. And she found herself thinking that if she only would allow herself to bathe an instant in them--in that flash of hard-shared truth, like something holy yet utterly ephemeral that they held--that she would regain some innocence the world had long ago stripped away from her.

And she nearly had done.  _Very nearly_.

Instead, she had spoken a true lie, and in doing so had wiped that denuding regret and uncharacteristic shame from his face.

Allan-A-Dale had not, after all, given her this mark. No, she well-remembered the face of the three men it had taken to hold her down and mark her, as well as the faces of those who held her once-pretty mother, and also the step-father that had brought them to that torturous intersection in Treeton.

Her head jerked up as she heard rustling sounds nearby too noisy to be a single traveler.

Apron still in her hand, its underside now smeared with the bruise concoction, and wet with water beside, she straightened herself, re-covered her shoulder, and stood to meet the horse and rider emerging from the underbrush.

It was a woman, unconcerned about concealing her gender, and dressed in the sort of light shift and trousers one might only occasionally see in rare images imported from the Holy Land, or at faires in larger market towns than Nottingham.

Though the woman on horseback was unlikely to mark it, Nell had to work to hold in something of a wry smile upon her arrival. "It is a strange sight," she told the woman, not waiting for an introduction, "and one which I never thought to live to see: a dead woman...riding horseback."

At this the woman rider smiled down, noting Nell's hair and eye color, the shape of her lips, and her particular lack of intimidation when encountering a stranger (as on horseback) with the clear upper hand.

Marian threw a glance into the deeper wood, just over her shoulder, where she had only minutes ago run across Allan heading back to the camp. "And it is a strange sight for me," she told the standing woman, "meeting a woman we all of us at one time or another have coming to believe is entirely fictional."

Nell's eyebrows contracted at this news, both at the absurdity of it, and at the oddness that she was being discussed anywhere. "My existence is in doubt?" she asked, doing a final wipe of her hands on her apron. "That is curious. It is not as though  _I_  am well-publicized as dead."

Marian slightly balked at this. "Is that what they are saying? That he killed me?"

"Certainly," Nell was glad to inform her. "That is the Sheriff's story. Meant to cow the populace. There are... other, more inventive tales."

Marian's raised eyebrows encouraged her to continue.

"...you were killed, but using a potion Robin Hood's Saracen made from a hair stolen from the Sheriff's head, he called you back to life, but could not re-conjure your soul, and the love it is said you once shared with him..."

"A hair," critiqued Marian, "from the  _Sheriff's_  head? A rare spell, that."

Nell went on with her list, "...your soul is now trapped within Lord Gisborne's sword."

Marian's face turned hard, as though she had donned a become-familiar mask. "He is no longer 'Lord' Gisborne now, Nell," she told her, using her name. "Nor even 'Sir'. In King Richard's realm he has lost all status, all right, and any form of privilege."

"Was it worth it, then? For a man?"

Marian shook her head to disagree. "I didn't oppose Guy for the sake of Robin."

"No, I know. But you did it for Richard, yes? Was it worth it to lose all you lost that day? And harshly wounded beside?"

"But you must think of what I've gained," Marian counseled her, intrigued by how Allan's Nell viewed the situation. "A husband."

"Not so very hard to come by," Nell assured her, scoffing, "with a face and dowry like yours."

Marian continued to attempt to persuade her. "A chance to make a difference in the world, no longer as a mere spectre in the night. To live without the need of disguising my true self."

Nell did not counter this.

"Freedom," Marian said, sensing that the other woman would have no negative reply to this. "And, in a way, I did it for Guy." She had never yet said this aloud. Certainly she could not share so with the gang, with Robin. Perhaps, on a good day, perhaps with Djaq... "If he had killed Richard, as was, he thought, in his best interest, there would have been no future for him. I knew I was never to be his. Richard dead at his hand, coupled with the despair of me lost to Robin would have closed the door on any glimmer of redemption for him. I think the darkness he holds would only have multiplied exponentially."

"So then, you did it for a man," Nell reasserted.

Marian chose to return to their prior topic of discussion. "Well, what are the others, then?"

More comfortable with this vein of gossip than learning Lady Marian's inner thoughts, Nell continued. "...that your love for Hood was transferred into another of his gang."

"Which one?" Marian almost giggled, so charmed by the thought.

"The big man, John Little, I believe, is most frequently cast in that role."

Marian bit her lip, trying to swallow back a giggle, thinking of Little John's dignity. "And what think  _you_?" she asked Nell. "You seem to have some knowledge of the truth of the Holy Land trip."

Nell left a moment for considering. "The Nightwatchman still rides," she said, slightly shrugging. "A ghost they say, but the aid he gifts the peasants is real enough."

Marian inclined her head in a semi-bow. "I am pleased to hear that you think so."

"And why would anything I think please Hood's lady?"

"Because you are quick enough to have more than once fooled Allan, a man often at fooling, and rarely fooled. Because you live and move among the people. Because you are a woman that seems to know something of the desire for autonomy. And because you have shared things with me today that Robin's other lads would have not."

Nell let a half-grin settled onto her face, and irreverently joked, "Are you asking me to join your gang, then?"

At this, Marian laughed. "I haven't any gang," she assured her through the laugh. "Robin does. I tried to join it once," she inclined her head to one side, as if remembering. "The addition of myself did not turn out so very well." She let a beat pass and then continued. "Robin has a thief. Perhaps I  _do_  wish to recruit one for my own. Someone with eyes and ears listening with my particular interests in mind. Someone who will tell me what is afoot in the shire, without censoring it. Perhaps someone to whom I might, on occasion, speak uncensored."

From where she still stood by the brook, Nell waited to reply to Marian's offer while re-taking the other woman's measure. "And  _I_  want what A-Dale took from me," she declared. "A coin purse, its contents doubtless long ago spent. A necklace, quite recently snatched."

"...and a kiss?" Marian teased, suspecting more of the story than she could have possibly known. "Well, I cannot--or rather," she chuckled, "will not--return  _that_  to you. The other items can, perhaps, be...compensated in some way, if not outright located. But I warn you, Nell." Marian's face took on a mischievous quality. "Heed the day you find yourself no longer the one running, but the one  _pursuing_. For that is when you know."

"Know what?" Nell asked, a slight irritation in her tone, never one to enjoy either advice or meddling.

"Oh," said Marian with put-on wisdom, herself an old married woman now. "When it comes, you will."


End file.
